Artificial Sweetener

             One morning in early November, I woke with an image, unexpected, like my whispers, but visual – not my gift. 

            The animated image began with a little pink package that slowly zoomed in toward me to reveal itself as artificial sweetener.  The scene zoomed back out and I watched the pink package rise up toward the sky.  It then multiplied into a fan of packages, which then opened themselves up, then turned themselves upside down, and then package by package, like a wave in the stands of a football game, starting with the left-most package and ending with the right-most, they each sprinkled down their sweetener. 

Next I was shown what stood below the sweeteners: a church.  I saw the artificial sweetener sprinkle down like gentle snow upon the church.  This image appeared like a nostalgic Norman Rockwell scene. 

Then the scene zoomed out to show both the church and a second fan of packages in the sky.  Additional fans of packages began to emerge like ripples, with each fan positioning itself behind the one before.  Row by row, starting with the front row, the packages opened themselves, turned themselves upside down, and then sent down their sweetener, this time not package by package, but fan by fan.  As full fans of artificial sweetener rained down, this scene was more dramatic, like thick snow raining heavily upon the church.  Norman Rockwell would not have drawn this scene. 

Then a whisper arrived: 

The church is getting baptized with artificial sweetener.

             The animated vision receded and my whispers said no more. 

            I laid in bed pondering the vision, first that I had had one at all.  For nineteen years, I have received auditory messages from a world beyond ours, usually by surprise, off my radar, and so much more profound than any of my own petty thoughts.  But, other than a few during my “summer in the twilight zone” in 2005, visual messages I have not seen, nor, for that matter, asked for.  This one was the second over the course of about five weeks of visions I’m calling Metaphors of Life. 

            Like my whispers, this one also arrived by surprise and quite distinct from the chattering in my head of the things I needed to do that day.  A few days later, I shared it with my dietician friend, the same one who shared the story that began my Traps of Life post about the client to whom she suggested switching from Coke to Diet Coke and his resistance at a change so mild.  I asked her what she thought of the vision and any meaning she, as a dietician, might attribute to artificial sweetener.  She said what came to her was “empty calories,” the dietician way of saying “no nutritional benefit.” 

            Together we lamented the sadness of this message.  In various ways, both of us have seen it play out in the church, which I no longer attend.  I tried for quite some time to be the Evangelical and the Mystic, but I can no longer straddle those identities.  Tragically, mystics don’t fit into today’s churches.  Is it because they are getting baptized with artificial sweetener? 

            As I reflected on the meaning, I considered the nature of artificial sweetener: too sweet, not natural, man-made, temporary, and addicting. 

I then pondered what the church is called to be: salt.  The distinction is striking.  They might look alike, but one is sweet and the other is bitter, one gives nutrition and the other takes it away, one is temporary and the other is a preservative.  Artificial sweetener delights us for the moment, but salt preserves us for the long term. 

Finally, I connected this vision to the previous one, already posted, The Smorgasbord, and I saw the artificial sweetener as one of the “delights” of the smorgasbord.  The salt we are called upon to be could be like one of those spaces between the delights.  These are those little seen open spaces between the many delights toward which we draw ourselves. 

Ah, those spaces!  At first, they seem bitter, like salt, but then we discover how they preserve us, and then they become sweet, like natural sugar.  I find myself encouraged to take the time to draw from those spaces between the smorgasbord delights and choose what has long-lasting nutritional benefit.  To do so is not easy: the delights and the artificial sweetener are so tempting, so pleasing.  May I have the strength and the patience to wait for what is better.

 

© 2025 by karina.  All rights reserved.  Please use with permission and/or a link to this blog post.

 

Previous posts noted in this one

The Smorgasbord

The Traps of Life

Inspiration for blog title (summer in the twilight zone)

The Evangelical and the Mystic

Winter Solstice 2024: Magical Moments

             The snow is falling: a magical moment.  The stars, a sunset, a squirrel scurrying up your tree, your child playing in delight, your cat resting on the window sill, your dog chewing on a bone, and the snow, heavy, but gentle, falling outside your window right now: as you pause to gaze upon each of these, you enjoy a moment of magic and wonder. 

            Too often in the first half of my adult life, these magical moments passed me by.  Of course, in the first half, we establish ourselves and our families.  We build the ground beneath our feet to free ourselves to gaze upon the stars above – or the snow falling outside. 

            In these magical moments of these past few years, I’ve made many shifts of perceptions, as described in this brief little post last month: “I used to think.”  You’ll see there a glimpse of the healing and freedom this shift has brought, along with a glimmer of the message of the book I’m writing.  

This is has come, no doubt, at a great cost, of losing much; in every area of life, I was called upon to “Let Go.”  As shared in the Letting Go series, I was injured into a perfect metaphor of letting go when I lost the use of both of my hands for a couple of months.  My whispers of mystery had already, for a couple of years, been whispering “let go.”  In case I didn’t get the message, my angels made sure I did by letting me fall 6 feet and took away the use of my hands.  I had no choice but to let go! 

            Today the magic comes.  From where?  Often, by surprise, in those spaces between the delights, as shown to me in the Smorgasbord vision posted last month.  If we are attuned to receive them, they appear between all those other moments, in that busy rush of activity we lead in the part of ourselves I call our “human self," that part that formed by the dust of the ground, as expressed in Genesis 2:7.  This is the part who lives normal, practical life and works very hard to survive and even to get ahead.  Our human self can see only what is right before us, which, for practical purposes, is usually sufficient. 

If you listen to Churchianity, you’ll think this is the only part we have.  Yet, if we read the full verse, we’ll see there is another part, a magical part, from which we were also formed: the breath of life.  This breath of life breathed into Adam and us all, is what I call our “eternal self.”  This part is our expanded consciousness that can see far and wide, the part of us that was with us before we were born and will stay with us after our physical, human self dies.  Here, in this elusive eternal self is where the magic is to be found. 

As for me, I smile this winter solstice that both my human self and my eternal self find outlets for joy and wonder.  My “human self” is still active with substitute teaching, especially for Spanish, English, PE, and my favorite, the ESL resource room rotations; walks, dinners, desserts, and coffee with friends; my writer’s group; our local bilingual group made up of both first language English and Spanish speakers; and plenty of racquet sports, both tennis and pickleball.  I also make annual visits to my mom’s and help to accommodate her home and frequently connect with my kids who are both adulting too quick, with much success.  My oldest works for a wonderful state legislator, for whom he served as Campaign Manager and helped him win his election; my youngest is thriving at college, studying psychology and Spanish; and each are leasing a home with a terrific group of friends.  They’re independent, stable, happy, and I see them tomorrow – yay! 

My “eternal self” enjoys more gazing, nature walks, and more time reading, yet fewer books with more pauses.  Finally, in what I suppose is a joint project of my “human” and “eternal” self, I’m writing the discovery of this eternal self and the difference that discovery makes.  Take a tiny sneak peek of part of its message here. 

Many blessings of magical moments this holiday and coming new year! 

© 2024 by karina.  All rights reserved.  Use only with permission and/or a citation and link to this post.

 

Posts referenced

I used to think (book snippet), Letting Go, The Smorgasbord

 

Previous Winter Solstice Messages

Winter Solstice 2023, Winter Solstice 2022, Winter Solstice 2021, Winter Solstice 2020

The Smorgasbord

             This fall like the autumn leaves and the bursting clouds, a shower of images came upon me, metaphors with a message playing like a video.  Not my gift.  Mine is auditory, hence the title of my blog, “whispers of mystery.”  My whispers periodically entered during these scenes, acting as a narrator with only a few words.  They also titled them: Artificial Sweetener, Backstroke Swimmers, The Smorgasbord, The Bumblebee and the Hawk, and the Laser Beam.  A perfect complement for Thanksgiving, with its own smorgasbord feast, is The Smorgasbord.  

First, a little context.  These visions came like my whispers, unexpected, off my radar, and interrupting the silly chatter of my own mind with its complaints, worries, and petty preoccupations.  Unlike my own preoccupations, these whispers are not petty, nor complaining, nor judgmental, yet instead, profound, clever, witty, teasing, playful with puns I never would have thought of, and they are much smarter than I am.  Their voice is gentle, quiet, and plural.  Their pronoun is they because I hear them like a choir so perfectly in tune to the same note that I can’t distinguish between any two voices, though I hear them plural, as a chorus. 

The human self and the eternal self

            The Smorgasbord builds on my own musings over the dual nature within the human condition, which I call the “human self” and the “eternal self.”  I came to this understanding by observing it first within myself and then by seeing it in the description of Adam’s creation in Genesis 2:7, from both the dust of the earth (which I call the human self) and the breath of God (the eternal self).  

            The former pastor Ethan of my blogged book, “Just like Eve," explains it in Headshaking Lot of Change.  He laments the current Christian tradition “is missing the gems of wisdom by interpreting as literal history stories that were designed to reveal the mysteries of the soul," and he grieves that “Augustine missed this very important creation of our opposing parts within and claimed instead that men were born into ‘Original Sin.’ His hypothesis has been followed for millennia, yet the Bible presents us as humans in duality, just like Adam was.’” 

            Ethan continues by noting this duality runs through the Bible, first as metaphors like Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Israel and Ishmael, and Joseph and his brothers, then further developed by Paul in Romans as the struggle within of the self that doesn’t do what it wants to do and does do what it doesn’t want.  Then he notes the duality is further developed in sayings of Jesus in the extra-canonical Gospel of Thomas.  (For the full dialogue, click here.) 

            All mystical traditions carry an expression of the dual nature of humans, whether it is the Hindu Shiva and Shakti, the Buddhist natural and transforming natures, the Taoist yin and yang, and so forth.  Leading psychologists like Carl Jung have also discovered these natures within the human psyche.  Here in The Smorgasbord, they appear with the names I call them, the human self and the eternal self.

The Smorgasbord

             Just as my whispers come to me, by surprise, interrupting my petty mind chatter, earlier this month, this unexpected vision arrived.

             Before me stood a grand buffet table, a great smorgasbord of delights, each in miniature form, like toy cars and tiny doll houses.  Laid upon it were furniture and food, clothing and computers, silver rings and cell phones, toys and treasures, an RV, a boat, a house, a Ford F-110, and a Tesla, all in miniature.  So were our modern distractions: video games, social media pages, YouTube channels, TikTok and Etsy promos, and a host of infomercials.

             As I watched, more and more treasures descended from the ceiling upon the smorgasbord.  Soon the table was cluttered so tight none of the delights could anymore be seen in their distinct form.  My whispers pointed and uttered: 

These are the human self’s free choices.

             The vision then presented obstructions to the delights, obstacles that looked like boulders, shown as preventing the onlooker from accessing the treasures.  These were shown in the form of bills marked “LATE” in red lettering, cut up credit cards with low credit scores pinned to them, guns and cannonballs, hospital beds and prescription drugs, crying children, and demanding family members.  Also shown were urgent emails from bosses, next to the never-replied-to emails of the employees to their bosses warning of the same matter.

             I felt my angels smirking when I came upon the display of the emails.  As they frequently do, they were teasing me with this very personal image.  I lingered on it, recalling my own repeated emails to my supervisors who never replied, then made the matter I had warned them of my problem. 

            The vision then zoomed in to a close-up of a few of the treasures, a toy car, athletic shoes, a chocolate bar, and a specialty coffee drink with plenty of the whipped cream I love.  I was then shown a few, sparse spaces between some items on the smorgasbord.  My whispers spoke once more: 

            The finest treasures are in the spaces between the delights.

           These spaces had been wider, before modern life had deposited too many delights and distractions.  Now they were few, sparse, and shallow.  However, I next saw the spaces begin to glow with light, as if a candle had been lit within them.  These spaces were shallower, but brighter.  Pointing to these spaces, my angels whispered once more: 

These are the eternal self’s options of free will.

             Free choice for the human self.  Free will for the eternal self.  Interesting.  As I said at the start, my whispers are smarter than me.  They do this often.  They whisper a tantalizing mystery, and then they leave.  They don’t explain it.  They leave it to me to reflect on, ponder, or, as I like to say, percolate over.

             As I percolated over this image, I perceived free choices are limited.  They may be plentiful, like the smorgasbord, but they are nonetheless finite.  But free will is limitless. 

            I also reflected the more choices given to the human self, the less likely is the human to look beyond the smorgasbord to the limitless choices of the eternal self.  These human choices of free choice also impede the human from creating within himself an opening to meet the eternal self. 

            It is in the spaces between the human self’s choices where the eternal self resides.  As the choices multiply, the spaces shrink, and they may keep shrinking until they are nearly invisible.           

            Today, our choices are so vast the spaces for the eternal self to be found are so slim.  Yet – and here is the miracle of our time – our divine forces are brightening those slim spaces.  There may be fewer, shallower spaces for us to enter to meet the eternal self, but they are brighter, calling to us, wooing us, drawing us into them.

 The Metaphors of Life

Since The Smorgasbord was one of a series of visions, each showing what I call a metaphor of life, I’ll begin a Metaphors of Life series at the start of 2025.  I hope you’ll look out for these in the new year and until then, enjoy your Thanksgiving smorgasbord.  Be sure to look for those spaces between the delights for the finest treasures!

 

© 2024 by Karina.  All rights reserved.  Use only with permission and/or a link to this blog post.

I used to think

             I used to think life is random, coincidence, spotted with agonies to put up with it, as stoics.  Not wired as a stoic, I was told to quit whining.  If stoicism was not to be wired into me, perhaps it could be commanded into me.  But that never worked. 

I used to think the divine force stars in the Bible as an entity called “God,” also stoic, who made us and walked away, except from his favorites.  I read this “God” to be like a teacher with pets.  This God has favorites, and when his favorites squabble with their neighbors, this God does not break up the fight, does not train them to live in harmony together, does not serve as a neutral arbitrator.  No, this God, joins the fight, fights for his favorites, and even commands them to kill their neighbors.  From this, I used to think the divine force is petty, unfair, untrustworthy, and even cruel, an upside-down Robin Hood who gives to the greedy and steals from the kind. 

I used to think I must take life into my own hands.  If the divine is untrustworthy, life is random, and I’m not a stoic, then calling out to the heavens is futile and I will take charge.  I consulted experts, and many agreed life is random, but it has patterns, trends, and statistical probabilities.  If I study the patterns and probabilities and control this mostly random, yet statistically probable life, I can reduce my chances of suffering.  But suffering still came, often in the form of ever-evolving, yet ever present disturbances of mental health.  I sought the doctors for help, and they prescribed medications, which sometimes made me feel worse. 

            I used to think my belief in the God who picks favorites and abandons everyone else and my mental health disturbances were separate.  I used to think they have nothing in common. 

            Finally, I challenged my mind, my thoughts, and my belief that calling to the heavens is futile.  I cried to the heavens and screamed for help. 

            Then, miracles from the heavens poured as a grand waterfall of showers upon me.  My little children, both of them together, saw angels, with my older, four, describing them and telling me where they were, and my younger, one-and-a-half, nodding, pointing to the same place, and clapping in delight.  I began to hear the angels, called them my whispers of mystery, and over the course of many years, they transformed my mind and my thoughts.  They whispered their mysteries to me and then confirmed them through synchronicities, scriptures, the natural world, and surprise encounters with sages who understood.  They introduced me to the divine forces in the heavenly realms and in the world within, deep into the deepest waters of my heart.  

            They unveiled a divine force altogether different and astonishing in its Order and Harmony.  They revealed the unity of all things, and they unfolded the veil of my illusions.  Through the signs in the natural world, synchronicities, miracles, and their whispers of mystery, they showed me life is not random.  They whispered, if I watch these signs and search within, into the deepest waters of my heart, where, unlike in the surface waters of my heart, the winds and tides and storms are distant, and where the waters are calm and constant – from there, they will guide me in protection.  They whispered to be patient, to let go, to surrender, and to watch for their signs.  And they led me out of my terrors, my anxieties, my mental health disturbances.  They led me on a path that counters my culture, counters my religion, and counters what I used to think. 

            The set me free.  No more medications.  No more anxiety.  Healing for me came not from drugs.  It came from from reframing the divine, reframing life, reframing myself, and discovering my divine guidance from the deepest waters of my heart.

© 2024 by karina.  All rights reserved.  Please use only with permission and/or a link to this blog post.

The Traps of Life: Stepping Stones to Majesty

             A close friend of mine, a dietician, told me this past week about a client of hers not much older than us (Gen X) whose blood work suggests an early death, five years or so from now, unless he changes a few of his habits.  While he apathetically slumped in his chair, she counseled him to switch from Coke to Diet Coke. 

“Just that would increase his life span by a few years,” she told me.

“Just switching to Diet Coke?!” The change sounded so small.  Later I thought about my resistance to move to decaf from regular coffee to minimize my insomnia.  But at the time, as a non-pop drinker, I was astonished.  “You mean switching to water would add those years, right?”

            “No, I didn’t go there.”  She laughed, shook her head, and looked up.  I could see her imagining his reaction to a suggestion of water.  “Just switching to Diet Coke would do wonders for him, and he won’t do it.”

            I had recently been reflecting on what I call the “traps of life,” and my friend’s story dove-tailed into it so perfectly it was like my whispers of mystery were confirming a message they had just uttered on my favorite trail walk.

While walking through this trail of forested land by a river, I was soaking in the beauty of Planet Earth.  Ours is the most majestic, beautiful, abundant planet of any the astronomers have located.  We humans are given the great fortune of landing on the most glorious planet of the universe.  But it’s also a planet, for us humans, loaded with traps, and each trap carries multiple layers.  Similar to my friend’s client, we can consider the trap of drinks:

To conquer beer, one turns to wine

To conquer wine, one turns to wine coolers

To conquer wine coolers, one turns to pop

To conquer pop, one turns to diet soda

To conquer diet soda, one turns to juice

To conquer juice, one finally turns to water

Our drinks are one trap.  Just one.  Then there’s our food, our shopping, our habits, and for each of these, we have many, and each one carries multiple layers.  Think of those with the trap of beer: how many of them ever make it to water?

To conquer a single trap is triumph.  But once we start conquering any of them, the rest are easier.  And, if you can conquer the traps, life on Earth is glorious and magnificent.  

Reflecting on these traps, a whisper of mystery came through: The Creator made Earth the most majestic, glorious physical place anywhere.  But the majesty can be apprehended only by approaching it through its traps, like reaching the majesty at the top of a mountain through the treacherous act of climbing it.

Today, one could reach the top of a mountain by helicopter.  But the helicopter tourist could never appreciate the majesty like the mountain climber could.  From this we see the majesty of Earth is not denied to those who take shortcuts to see it, but it is only presented in its full glory to those who take the painstaking long road up.

If we see the traps as methods to the majesty, they are no longer futile.  No longer do they appear to us as seemingly random misfortunes of cruel fate, but as the stepping stones to majesty.

© by Karina Jacobson 2024.  All rights reserved.  Please use only with permission and/or a link to this blog

Mysteries without Answers

             After a decade of debrainwashing, I hit an impasse.  “Debrainwashing” is what I called that process of lifting, layer by layer, the conditioning I had been taught by my family, education, religion, and society at large.  In some way to and to some extent, I was finding each layer false.  Whatever I had been taught was not, in fact, true.  I had fallen into the rabbit hole, taken the Matrix red pill, and the more untruths I uncovered, the more I found.  I had hit that point that every genuine truth-seeker eventually arrives: is there anything we can know to be true?

            If you take any paradigm to its natural conclusion, you hit its delusion, its opposite.  You will prove it wrong with your own paradigm.  My heroine of Just like Eve took the training she had been given by her church to its conclusion and exposed the lie based on its own teaching.  Although her church condemned Eve, Jasmine read the Bible the way her church taught her to read it and found Eve heroic.

Physicists are doing the same thing.  While probing the mysteries of science, they are undermining their own laws.  Their own tools and methods are proving their science to be false. 

In Why Fish Don’t Exist, Lulu Miller shows the same for the scientist she follows, David Starr Jordan.  He had faithfully followed Darwin’s scientific philosophy, faced despair, and only conquered his despair by discounting his own philosophy, yet not admitting it.  Taking his own philosophy to its conclusion, he had declared “Nature no respecter of persons,” yet he overcame his despair with an opposite manifesto: “That which is in man is greater than all that he can do.”  Of this Miller says, “It was the kind of lie he promised he would never tell himself.”  Later, she demonstrates that Jordan undermined Darwin’s philosophy when he, Jordan, declared certain persons “unfit,” even advocating for their sterilization.  Darwin, however, had adamantly insisted this is Nature’s job.  Not man’s.  Darwin warned men not to interfere with Nature.  Jordan, a devoted follower of Darwin, did just that.

My own truth-seeking under the paradigm I had been taught also led me to its natural conclusion.  I had “wrestled” for years with the “God” I had been taught, particularly “his” cruelty that extended even to commanding genocide.  In my moment of emptiness, like Nietzsche, I declared this “God” “dead.”  Although the death of this “God” was a relief, I was now left with the greatest of mysteries: What is the realm just beyond our senses?  Is there an Intelligence within it? Does this Intelligence care about us, in our world?

My impasse into emptiness was mirrored by my external life. Within two years (2021-23), a mere blink, I had lost my marriage, my career, my two kids off to college, and even our two cats, the first to my former husband and the second to my daughter.  It was also during this blink that I left the church and the “God” it taught, though continued to follow its teacher.  Just has my inner life had morphed into emptiness, so did my outer life into an empty home, no longer a teacher, wife or mom with kids and cats at home.

My blank slate drew me into discoveries new yet old, ancient, in fact, that had lain deep within my own intuition.  Having studied the wisdom of other traditions, I was aware of the ancient maxim, As Above, so Below, along with its corollary, expressed, for example, in Saying 22 in the Gospel of Thomas, to “make the inner as the outer,” or that our internal self is reflected by our external life.  My own life demonstrated this to be true.

Meanwhile, I was finding synchronicities everywhere, a remarkable universal harmony among all things, and that what I sow I also reap.  It often comes many years later and in ways I never would have imagined, but in some way, sometimes happily and sometimes sorrowfully, in my own lifetime, I reap what I sow.

Still, mysteries without answers remain.  Maybe I reap what I sow, but does everyone? I’ve longed to see it confirmed, yet meet another impasse.  Bullies keep bullying and the bullied keep getting kicked.  How do wealthy narcissists who exploit others to make themselves great again and again continue to win in the game of life? 

True, occasionally, some rich bastard gets his due, locked up for some white collar crime, with his mug shot plastered over the evening news, and the rest of us celebrate that this crook who had stolen from thousands finally got what was coming to him.

But the story, reporting the conviction of this crook, masks all that’s behind it.  Who are the crook’s friends?  Superiors?  Colleagues?  Was he just a fall guy?  For a much bigger empire?  A pawn of a mafia?  My longing for revenge upon the hateful persists. 

Then there are the kind, lovable, oppressed, exploited, abused ones who have done nothing to receive such abuse, then die a cruel death.  Again, no answers. 

I think about the little boy in a favorite story, who stands amidst a vast mass of starfish washed upon the seashore, throwing a few, one by one, back into the ocean.  A passerby, perhaps a teenager who’s been stomping on the poor starfish to his twisted delight, mocks the boy. “You can’t save them all.”  The boy picks up another, tosses it into the ocean and says, “But I can save that one.”  This little boy will reap what he sows, right?  Some day, someone might save him too?  And what about the teen who’s been gleefully torturing other starfish?  Will he also reap what he sows?

I wonder whether I can’t see the “reaping” for the people I find hateful because I find them hateful.  Seeking vengeance, perhaps I’m not intended to enjoy the chance to see them get their due.

Could the Universe be testing us?  Are we given exceptions to the sowing and reaping law to keep the mystery alive?  We see exceptions, point to them, and say to ourselves, “It’s not true.  What we sow, we don’t reap.  Look at them.”  So what do we do?  We start sowing bad seeds to our own delight at the expense of other people, because, why not? 

Given that we all intuitively believe what goes around comes around, we’re challenged with the exceptions.  Will we follow our intuition and try to sow kindness?  Or, will we be tempted to follow the exceptions that tell us it doesn’t matter, that we can do whatever we want?

With plenty of reason to doubt, many quit bothering to try.  Others persist in the hope for a reward and get disappointed when the “return” seems elusive or takes a long time.

That’s me.  Staying true to my intuition of its truth, I’ve tried to live it, and often, the “reward” comes barely in time to avoid a crisis.  Could this be because I’ve expected one?  If I were more like the boy who casts a starfish back into the ocean just because he can “save that one,” would the return appear more readily?  Perhaps to me, the Universe has shrugged, “Yeah, yeah, you sowed, so you’ll also reap, because that is how the Universe works, but you since you did it for a reward, you’ll have to wait for it.  You’ll have to wait so long, you’ll doubt it.  Then it can be known whether you’re willing to sow even if you don’t reap.”

Imagine a friend of the boy, also casting back starfish, who hears the boy’s reply that he can “save that one” and, in sheer delight, pipes in, “And it’s fun to throw them back!” 

These two boys aren’t saving starfish because they think one day they’ll also be saved.  They are sending the starfish back in a moment of joy.  They delight in saving starfish.  Maybe we also can delight that there are some mysteries without answers.

 

© 2024 by Karina.  All rights reserved.  Please use with permission and/or a link to this blog post.

Winter Solstice 2023

             “Return.”  That’s what ancient Chinese sages called the Winter Solstice, when they asked people to cease travel, stay home, and celebrate in warmth.  Coming immediately after “Disintegration” in their system of the I Ching, Return is an especially beautiful moment of peace, one I can now resonate with.  When I started this tradition of Winter Solstice messages, I titled the first one “2020 was Different,”  smiled at the understatement, and was thankfully unaware of what more “different” was still coming in 2021 and ‘22, for me at least.  Ironically, this year that has brought more “disintegration” globally has been one for me personally – finally – that has been less “different.”

It's still had loss – becoming an empty-nester – but at least this time, it’s of the celebratory sort.  And right now, I have both kids home for Christmas for a few weeks – yay!  My son graduated from college, moved into a home he’s leasing with good friends, and secured a great position working for a warm and dedicated legislator at the OR State Capitol.  Three months later, my daughter, now a college sophomore, also moved out into a home she’s leasing with friends, and even took the cat.  I knew I’d miss the kids, but I didn’t realize how much I’d miss the cat!  I plan to find one of my own, but my current work as a substitute teacher lacks the stable routine to introduce a pet, so I’ll wait for the summer.  

When I was asked recently to compare substitute teaching to having my own class, I paused.  Hmm.  It depends on your moment in life.  There is something very special about watching your own students rise into their success.  That moment when their “light” turns on, and they “get it,” and produce something amazing, after you’ve been pumping them up for weeks – “You got this!” – and they don’t think so, and then they finally do and surprise themselves and delight you, is Magic.  For a time, I lived for that Magic.  But I also didn’t get to “leave” work; some of it was always coming home with me.  Itching to write, substituting is now a blessing. 

            As my blog shows, I had been writing while teaching, but it was a constant challenge not only to find the time but also the mental space for it.  Having completed the book I was blogging, “Just like Eve,” I am now working on another behind the scenes.  I hope to show future publishers with this blog, especially “Just like Eve,” they can trust me as an author.

            I had never anticipated when I began “Just like Eve,” quite how much I would identify with my heroine Jasmine, accused of being “just like Eve,” who through her marital shakeup, forbidden love, eviction from church, and her own research into the figure of Eve, even from the biblical story's plain text, and, even more, in its own language, discovers both Eve’s heroism and her own.  Calling the book a “spiritual quest novel,” I also didn’t know how many of my own trials I’d face while I was writing story and how much these trials would teach me about myself, about life, and how to find it in its abundance.

            I’ve seen how hard, yet important, is to maintain honesty through our trials, facing them without pretending “resilience” or blaming anyone else.  When I was brainstorming my 2022 Winter Solstice message in November 2022, I intended a message of hope after loss.  Then on December 2 came the next loss, the fire to the racquet center where I worked, played, and met with friends.  Hadn’t I been through enough?  Of the fire, I recalled that classic ‘90s sitcom and said, “If Cheers went up in fire, Sam and Diane would have lost more than just their jobs.”

The planned optimism of last year’s Winter Solstice message was replaced with one my mom called “too dark.”  “It’s honest” I said, noting that the message already contained my reply: “we need to learn to allow ourselves to enter into the darkness and be honest that we feel it, and that it is hard.”   If I had tried to pretend optimism, I might have found surface peace, but not true peace.  That comes only by way of truth and the type of Return the sages considered the most meaningful: the one that carries us back to our original, truest selves, that self before our culture has conditioned us into something else.

Through this process, including my own trials of “disintegration,” I’ve landed onto something amazing.  There’s a remarkable place of miracles just beyond the five senses, and once you can reliably tap into it and conquer the forces trying to keep you out, you find that peace.  And if you can see your trials as entry points into it, you’ll gain a fresh perspective on everything that happens.  I hope you’ve been discovering this or will soon.  May 2024 be a year when we all come toward peace.

 * * * * * * *

For any curious about some of these I've learned, here is a capsule from one of my 2023 posts, Letting Go Part 2: Life without Hands:

Humility: when your teenage daughter is bathing you and your college student son is clipping your fingernails, you have to become very humble very quick.

Take nothing for granted: when you celebrate a thumb that works so you can dress yourself, you start to see how much you’ve taken for granted. 

A gentle touch:  You don’t realize how hard your touch can be until every touch brings you pain.  You’re starting to get better, so you’re now opening doors, pressing the walk button at a crosswalk, closing your dresser drawer, shaking someone’s hand, patting your teenager on the back for a job well done, squirting out hand cream, and knocking out those coffee grounds: those things you’ve done every day for years and taken for granted, and now they bring pain.  You wonder if your touch has been too hard, and then you wonder if your speech has been too hard, and if you need to seek a more gentle way to touch, to speak, and to live.

Forgive yourself:  You were foolish and you fell.  Now forgive yourself and learn.

Release yourself from other people’s expectations: there are those who think you should heal fast and get back to life.  But your body knows, and it tells you.  Listen to your body and set yourself free from those who think they know your body better than you do.

Show compassion: If you find yourself impatient with anyone, remember they might have just fallen.  Maybe they can’t use their hands.  Maybe there’s something else they can’t do that you can’t see.  Show compassion.

Slow down!  You’ve forgiven yourself – good.  But if you don’t want to re-injure yourself, slow down!

Let Go!  No matter where you are, where you’ve been, how hard you’ve fallen, nor how stupid you were when you fell, let it all go.

© 2023 by Karina Jacobson.  All rights reserved.  Please use with permission and/or a link to this blog post.